


that kind of day

by fadewords



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: (since that's apparently how adhd tags are formatted?), Autistic Doctor (Doctor Who), Clara Oswald Has ADHD, Food, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, and always i'm too much of a lazy fuck to capitalize anything or cut back on em dashes, anyway uhhhhHHHH have. a fic or whatever [jazz hands], dyslexic clara oswald, so there's that, some sweet sweet projection bc of course, the dr who's also adhd asf ftr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 21:49:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15325086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadewords/pseuds/fadewords
Summary: the doctor's been promising to take clara to the globe for weeks now, but things have kept getting in the way. now all the sudden disasters have finally died down and the doctor knows she's dying to go, bored to tears of ordinary human existence, but here's the thing: they're a tiny bit exhausted.(OR: the doctor's a bit run down and not exactly a stellar model of self-care. both the tardis and clara notice and attempt to help, with varying degrees of both observation skills and success.)(OR: 2 nd losers attempt to help each other out, brainwise, with varying degrees of success.)





	that kind of day

the doctor walked across the console room, deliberating.

they could go pick up clara, take her to see king lear in the ripe old year of 1606, mere feet away from the main stage, close enough almost to reach out and touch, if one had long enough arms, and this body very nearly did.

close enough, also, to be touched, if the audience was crammed enough—and the stageside seats always were. all stiff legs and sore feet and slippery shoulders from the heat of so many bodies jammed in so little a space, and crawling skin besides from the brush of an arm, the weight and heat of a body inches behind you, just out of sight but not out of reach of the termites between the shoulder blades…

close enough to hear the creak of the floorboards beneath the actors’ feet, close enough to hear the shift and rustle of the audience’s clothes, to smell the sour on them, the brandy, the sweat, the dough.

close enough to feel the tangling of all their timelines, if they were fixed enough, and the slow, even winking, the soft trail if they were less so, if they were important in other ways.

close enough for old straw and new leather and coming changes and squeaking shoes and missed opportunities and scraping heels and clara’s fog of perfume and rough sleeves and the sharp corners in her voice and the hot, squirming press of her cheek on their shoulder in thanks and—

close enough, in full, for entirely too many things.

maybe if they chose seats further away…

maybe if they just didn’t _go_ …

but it’d been long enough already. clara, they knew, was getting impatient. antsy. bored to tears with the humdrum of classes and students and dates and—well. maybe not the dates. maybe that was just them projecting.

but the building fog of classes and students and papers and taxes and things, the minutiae of day-to-day human life—that wasn’t projected. that was a tangible weight, not on her shoulders, but in her shoes, dragging them to the floor and along it like so many little anchors trawling through sand. if they left it any longer, she’d drown in it.

or something. the metaphor had gotten away from them, a little bit.

wasn’t the point, really. the point was there was an edge to her voice, a set to her shoulders, that they recognized, half from earlier days, trapped in a house with kids she loved but away from alien soil she loved nearly as much and the longing for it painted all over her stupid too-bright eyes—and half not from those early days at all but from the mirror, etched in the lines of a dozen different faces.

clara needed that alien soil every bit as much as they always had themself.

not all of their friends had shared it, over the years—some had needed the skies, some had needed the running, some had needed the hand in theirs, some the puzzles, some the new, the old, the ordinary, the wild. the paradoxical surety of a broken navigation system.

many had needed trembling hands in theirs and words dripping, flying, pulled inch-by-inch off their own tongues and a place to plant themselves.

clara needed to uproot.

and uproot and uproot and uproot, over and over and over. she needed newness and distance and discovery and home again and back for more. she needed—

to go see king lear, was what she needed.

so the doctor stopped pacing, hardly sparing a second to wonder when they’d started or how long they’d been pacing for, and walked over to the console.

they paused with their hands over the controls. tilted their head to the side, listening.

the usual hum of the tardis lights. the slight buzz of her circuits. the swirling sensation that was both home and vortex and _hello old girl / hello thief_. the rush of their own breathing. the double-beat of their hearts. the slight tap of hands they didn’t remember choosing to move.

a few more taps, and then they set to work without thinking, twisting, turning, tweaking dials and pulling levers and there was the whooshing, grinding, too familiar to be grating even though it was loud enough to set their ears halfway to ringing.

and then it stopped and their ears did ring, just a little, as the silence settled round them like a blanket before evening out to the usual multilayer shuffle of lights and circuits and home-vortex-girl-thief.

they spared a moment to close their eyes, take a breath, draw it all in—

and then they opened them again and grinned wide and strode out the door into clara’s room, already picking out the words they’d shout in greeting.

but the words died on their tongue as soon as the door closed behind them, because this—this wasn’t right. they were in the wrong room, for a start—the kitchen, not the bedroom—but that wasn’t all. there was something else, something….

the air was wrong.

…no, something else.

the _light_ was wrong. too bright, a shine and yellow cast that made them want to fish for any sunglasses that might be in their pocket, even though it meant sifting through the forty-six items they’d added a few days back, on top of those that’d already been there. (had it been a few days? it might have been a few hours. or a few weeks. who could say, really.)

the light was wrong, they knew. and that meant something. a problem with the sun? no. a problem with their eyes? also no. their sensory system? ...probably not, or at least not entirely, it felt like something _else_ , something obvious, staring them right in the face, something....

of course. stupid doctor.

the light was wrong because they were too _early_. the sun was still too high, the shadows weren’t long enough, and everything was yellow instead of pleasantly grayed. of course.

they’d overshot it, a little bit. which was, they supposed, just possibly, the tiniest bit typical.

but whatever. they’d just re-shoot it. (the wrong way of putting it, possibly, but they couldn’t be bothered to find whatever the right words were, just then.)

so they went back in the tardis and re-shot it.

came back out, and found before they even fully crossed the threshhold that they were now even earlier. it _felt_ earlier. tasted earlier. smelled it, too, bizarrely. shouldn’t do. time didn’t usually have a smell. not in this body, anyway.

but they _were_ in the bedroom now, so there was at least that. there was at least that.

the doctor made a face and walked back inside the tardis. thought about giving it just one more go—third time was the charm, or so the human saying went, didn’t it?

funny little saying, really. humans and their threes…. why they should prefer them over more reasonable numbers, like six, was beyond them. (though, of course, they had learned a thing or two, once upon a time, hundreds of years back, about the power of three….)

still. it was a stupid saying. and tempting as it might be to see how many tries it took to get the tardis in line, it was probably best not to bother. if she’d dumped them here early, not once but twice, it was probably for a reason. and bringing them back even earlier the second time was the most glaring _stop meddling, it won’t work_ they’d heard from her in...in...well. in a _while_.

they glared at the console, but left the tardis again.

fished out the sonic, scanned the area. nothing unusual. changed the setting, scanned again. still nothing.

they wandered the whole of the place. still nothing. slipped into neighboring flats, neighboring streets. still nothing. no funny readings, no funny news, no screaming humans, crying children, fire in the streets, tentacles rising up out of sewers…

none of that. just...nothing. just the usual mess of bodies and chatter and personal timelines in flux.

they squinted at the lot, searching for something, anything unusual, but nothing in particular stood out of the jumble—except for one young woman they recognized as the future inventor of a confectionery that would one day help end a centuries-old alien blood feud (long story—they’d been there, helped smooth things over, and eaten nearly a third of the supply to boot).

but _apart_ from the ingenious ms eileen rostrig—whose pastries really were quite delicious, even apart from their destiny—everything was ordinary as rocks and twice as dull. (none of the interesting angles.)

they gave it up as a bad job and trudged back to the tardis, where they glared at the walls.

“waste of time.” they jammed their sonic in a pocket, down past three sets of keys, a bag of marbles, and something uncomfortably slimy they’d have to remember to fish out later. “completely useless.” they glared at the ceiling. “you could’ve _said_ there was nothing on.”

the lights flickered in response.

“oh, _i’m_ stubborn? me? you’re the—”

the lights flickered again, rapidfire, and they closed their eyes against the near-dizzying pattern.

“fine, fine.” they waved a hand, braced themself against the console with the other. “shut up. you win.” she didn’t, actually, it made _perfect sense_ to keep searching for trouble despite there being zero sign of it, given she’d implied so strongly there _was_ some, but if it shut her up, stopped the _pattern_ ….

an apologetic beep, and when they opened their eyes the lights had stopped, and dimmed to boot.

“thanks, old girl.” they patted the console and went to wander the ship. they still had...they tilted their head to the side, brows furrowed...three hours and twenty-six minutes to kill.

how absolutely dreadful.

they tapped their hands against the side of their leg as they walked, fingers pressing invisible chords, then dancing imaginary scales, then pressing chords again, back and forth, back and forth.

they found themself, several imagined songs later, in the library, and wandered among the shelves. busied their hands picking books up and setting them back down, some stuck back in their rightful places on the shelves, and others discarded at random on little tables and in front of rows of dusty and undusty books.

gave it up, after a while, when their hands got bored. settled for trailing their fingers along dusty spines instead, noting distantly the back-and-forth shift of smooth to rough to cracked to taped and back again, and wondering if they could convince the tardis to reorganize them, this time not by title or author or planet of origin or topic or even color, but by the feel of their spines. imagined what it would feel like to run their fingers over a gradient from rough and cracked and peeling to silky-smooth and glossy and neat. wiggled their fingers, raised an eyebrow.

the tardis responded with an obliging whir and an almost indulgent shower of mental sparks, and the next shelf they ran their fingers over was a slow gradient that set their fingers wiggling all over again.

 _thanks, old girl_.

a softer shower of sparks.

the doctor kept walking, trailing their hands over shelves, for a gray smudge of time, and then stopped, acutely aware of the twinging in their knees, the scrape of sock-seams over their toes, both louder the more they moved. so they stopped. and stopped. and stopped again, because they kept wanting to walk to move to pace and wanting to be still at the same time and finding themself unable to manage either for more than a few moments at once.

sat, ultimately, on the end of a wide, squishy couch their eyes fell on as they looked around for something to stop them more permanently.

 _thanks, old girl_.

let their mind wander, because what else to do, what else to do in a library of books they'd either already read thrice over or deemed too boring or—

what else to do.

they stood again, an age later, and wandered some more. winced a little at their own footfalls, echoing weirdly in the thick-padded silence, and walked a little quieter, grateful that this body actually could.

headed back out of the tardis to poke around, because clara was due back soon and what was the point of being so early, without any adventure to uncover, if they couldn't at least make a cool entrance. so to speak, as they'd already entered. whatever.

but when they finally wound their way out of the tardis—after two wrong turns and a quick drink—they stopped short.

because the light was still wrong. it was still, it was still….

too early.

but impossible. it didn't _feel_ early—at least, not that early. (they'd sat around so _long_.)

they frowned, took out their sonic, took some more readings. frowned some more when they all came back normal, and tramped back inside the tardis for a more detailed analysis.

but that came up normal, too.

they leaned against the console and closed their eyes.

 _something_ was wrong. something, something. but it wasn’t the sun and it wasn’t the atmosphere and it wasn’t anything with the wiring or the building or any alien tech interfering or anything else they could think of.

maybe the tardis was right. maybe they _were_ just being stubborn.

or paranoid.

they _had_ just come off several rounds of planet saving, and the last two _had_ involved subterfuge—one involving a number of carnivorous alien slugs hidden in a pudding, and the other a sweet-smelling acid rain and a banshee (or what passed for a banshee on angsel 19) disguised as a grandmother in booties and an apron.

maybe, after all that, they were just making a bit too much of a handful of extra hours and some bright afternoon sunlight.

maybe. it would make sense, it would be fair—if they’d been just a little more suspicious of the odd smell and unusual lumps in the pudding a few lives might have been spared, and if they’d squinted a little harder at the non-banshee, their eardrums.

they frowned, rubbed their ears absentmindedly. shrugged the whole thing off and went to go make a mess of clara’s kitchen.

it wasn’t nearly as large as the tardis’s and not half as well-stocked, but they made do.

created a stack of waffles fit for an urnalian priestess, a sandwich fit for a two-year-old human, and half a pan of scrambled eggs they abandoned midway in to make a large mug of cocoa. (they considered, briefly, making coffee, as it might endear them to clara enough to forgive them for the mess—but then that was what lear was for, wasn’t it? so they decided against it, made cocoa instead. considered drinking it but then remembered there were cake mixes in the cupboard and maybe there was still time for those…?)

they were halfway through mixing up the cookie dough they’d accidentally made instead (they’d thrown away the instructions immediately, hadn’t even looked at them, and then promptly forgotten what they thought they knew about the recipe and improvised; probably it would taste all right in the end, and that was all that mattered)—halfway through when clara walked in with a skip in her step and barely a pause to lock the door behind her.

“i’m here!” she called, as though she hadn’t slammed the door with a bang that could wake the dead. “you all s—?”

the doctor paused mid-stir and blinked at her. then waved with the spoon. a chunk of cookie dough, still powdery on one side and a bit runny on the other, fell to the floor with a splat. “...i’ll clean that up.”

“no you won’t.”

“no, i won’t.”

“what is it, anyway? and what’ve you _done_ to my kitchen?” she gestured to the many soiled dishes and plates of food cluttering—well. cluttering just about every available surface in the kitchen and one more in her little living space.

“er. cookies, i think. and...i’ve been cooking.”

“cooking.”

“yes, cooking.” they paused. glanced down at the mixing bowl. “and baking. i suppose.”

“why?”

they shrugged. “why not?”

“...you got bored,” clara said. “you got bored and used up _half_ my food and you didn’t even _ask_!”

“not half.” the doctor gestured to the mostly full cupboards-and-fridge. “really more like—”

“really didn’t _ask_!”

“...there’s cocoa,” the doctor said, setting down the mixing bowl and reaching for the mug. it wasn’t as good as coffee, but maybe…?

“i don’t want your bloody cocoa!”

“technically it’s not mine, it’s—”

“i know whose it is.” clara closed her eyes, shook her head—then opened her eyes and walked all the way into the kitchen and stopped short perilously close to the doctor, setting their skin to crawling. “okay,” she said firmly. “so this is what we’re going to do. we’re going to leave, go see shakespeare, and come _right back to this moment_ and then you’re going to clean all of this up.” she paused. “and replace the food.”

“...okay.” they could resupply her shelves with stuff from the tardis, or else just give her money, and they had something in the tardis that could clean the kitchen for them in seconds. they were pretty sure they knew where to find...whatever it was called. finnicky cleaning droid from the twenty-ninth century, lots of moving parts, just one button to push, name started with “m”....

ah well. it’d come to them.

….clara was talking, they realized belatedly. what was she saying? a few seconds’ brow-furrowing and concentration and they caught the words “ _...get a move on_.”

the doctor snapped to attention, spread their arms wide, strode across the room. “right! london, 1606, globe theater! my good friend will!”

clara rolled her eyes. “namedropper. i bet you only met him in passing—saved a crowd from zombie eels or something, and he was slap in the middle.”

“alien witches, actually. and a few time distortions. and some rather _embarrassing_ turns of phrase. and,” they added, pausing on the tardis threshhold and jabbing the air for emphasis. “we got on quite well.” they nipped over to the console, flipped several switches. “he even fancied me once.”

“yeah?” clara’s face did a thing. they squinted at it for a moment—big, wide-eyed, shining—then looked away. whatever thing her face was doing, it was good, they were pretty sure. they could puzzle the specifics out later, if they really wanted. (they didn’t.)

“yeah,” they said, turning the usual lever and gripping the console tight. “big flirt. course, he probably won’t recognize me this time.” they gestured vaguely. “new face.”

“convenient,” clara said dryly, but her face kept doing the weird-good shiny thing. “all right, let’s—no, wait! wardrobe!” she took off down the hall.

the doctor glared after her, but stayed put. flicked a functionless switch back and forth, back and forth, and shifted a little on the spot, eyes drifting closed. they wished, vaguely, for a chair. or an apple. or something to _do_ instead of waiting even _longer_ just so she could find something period-accurate to wear (as though anyone would _care_ if she looked out of place or time).

they flicked the switch again, sharply, then again, slower, and traced their fingers round its edges, its corners.

heard clara half-running up the hall again, too impatient to walk and make less of a clatter, and opened their eyes. took a second, took a breath, flicked the switch one last time, felt the slow, firm, satisfying _click_ as it settled in place, and whirled around with their eyes wide open and crinkled at the corners by a grin that half-split their face.

“ready?”

clara grinned back, only half as wide but twice as bright, and hurried past them out the door in answer.

they stuck their hands deep in their pockets, carefully avoiding the slimy whatsit, and followed.

-

the streets were as crowded and smelly as expected, and the theater only slightly less so, but the doctor kept the grin plastered to their face throughout both walk and intolerable wait (they were— _again_ —earlier than expected). when the actors finally took to the stage and the crowd fell—not silent, but quieter, and clara stared ahead with wide eyes and clasped hands, suddenly stiller than they’d seen her in weeks—only then did they let the grin slip, let something softer replace it, as they watched her watch the stage.

her face was a different kind of bright, now, a different kind of complicated, but no less blinding, so they looked away after a few moments, but kept coming back to it, curious as much about her reactions as they were this iteration of the play (which they’d seen a good dozen other variations of at least, including a particularly memorable one performed entirely by insectoids from the riggley sector, with some delightfully pointed commentary about their various biocaste systems).

not that they were bored of it, or by it—it was engaging enough, of course, it always was. it was just—it was just—

hard to hear, was all. which wasn’t a problem, they had most of the thing memorized anyway, given the dozen adaptations and the number of times they’d flicked through their paper copy, and the time they’d spend feeding old will lines to begin with—though, hang on, hadn’t that been hamlet?

semantics. they knew it, was the point.

so it was fine, really, that the lines were a bit jumbled, the sound cluttered by the creak of the seats, the rush of the wind, the breath of the man four seats to their left, the overlap of their own thoughts, the crinkling of a venusian sweet wrapper in their pocket as they turned it over and over and—

“doctor,” clara hissed, tugging their jacketsleeve and frowning at them.

they raised their eyebrows. _what_.

“quit.” she glared at their pocket.

their eyebrows fell back down into a glare of their own, but they stopped.

she nodded once, clearly satisfied, and gave them a passing smile (either satisfied or indulgent, but either way undeniably like they were some kind of unruly _student_ ), before turning her full attention back to the stage where someone—they couldn’t be sure who, having lost track of both the scene and which person had which hairstyle—was dying.

the doctor turned their attention to it, too, watching intensely and sitting on their hands so they couldn’t wander, couldn’t start crinkling the wrapper again, or jingling keys, or doing something else that’d annoy her highness. the last thing they needed was for her to get shouty in the theater. or outside it. or in the tardis, or back at her place, or—really at all. they weren’t in the mood for shouting today.

(they sat on their hands, also, a little bit, so they couldn’t wander towards their mouth, so they couldn’t bite down on them. because now wasn’t the time for that, and there was no cause to be so irritated, even if the wrapper-crinkling _had_ been harmless, even if the smile _had_ been patronizing, even if they _hadn’t_ been ready to stop, even if—anything else. it wasn’t the _time_ . and anyway, who knew how patronizing clara would get if she saw them do _that_ , if a simple wrapper had made her use that _tone_ and look at them like—)

(it wasn’t the time, was the point.)

so they gritted their teeth and watched, and sat, and tried to find out where exactly in the play they were, how near the end.

not near enough, as it turned out. several more deaths to go.

they sat through them all, tallying them up in their head as they listened to the lines, waiting impatiently for each jumble to resolve itself into clear, shining words, helped along by the memorization.

after a while, they gave up trying to listen, either. the waiting made it boring, the gaps waiting couldn’t solve were _annoying_ , and the effort required to bypass the waiting kept threatening to drive a spike between their eyes anyway.

stupid.

so they sat, and they watched. and, from time to time, counted the seconds until usual runtimes said the play should be over, which was trickier than it should’ve been because they kept losing count.

_some time lord. can’t even—_

they closed their eyes. now there was a flavor of thought they hadn’t had in years. they opened their eyes and threw it away.

they were here to see a play. they were going to watch a play. they weren’t going to sit and play poor downtrodden student. who had time for that? who, when there were beautiful, brilliant words, and fantastic (if somewhat bland compared to the insectoids) actors, and a good friend  and all of them right here and so much more compelling?

no one.

so they sat up straighter—when had they slouched?—and paid attention again.

a bit too late, really, the play was more than half over now, but better late than never, as the saying went.

so they gripped the hem of their jacket and fiddled with a loose thread, and they watched, and they listened, and spared an occasional glance at clara to see—because hadn’t that been the plan in the first place, to watch her watch the play? wasn’t that _always_ the plan? time and space and new perspectives, instead of overworn backyards? wasn’t—?

it was.

so they watched the play in between watching her watch it, time trickling slow and shooting forward in uncomfortable, though familiar, turns. (maybe there’d been more to the bright light earlier than they’d allowed; maybe they ought to have waited to take her here after all….she’d never have known, and they might have avoided—this.)

but her broad grin when she stood, centuries and seconds and twenty minutes later all at once, was worth the lot. even the cloudy timesense.

it was even worth the prickling brush of bodies as everyone got up and tried to leave at once, and the wave of gray that came with it, thick and foggier than the time the tardis’d got fumigated—long story, nasty business with some homicidal space weevils....

it was even nearly worth the jarring silence as the tardis door slipped shut on the clamorous street behind them, tripling the haze.

it was not, however, even an _ounce_ worth the way clara stepped forward, arms outstretched, and _oh, rassilon_ —

they edged away, arms rising sharp to ward her off. “no, d—!”

but she hugged them anyway, told them to hush up.

so they hushed up. waited it out, arms hanging on either side of her, until she finally let go and they dropped their arms back to their sides and resisted the urge to brush themself off or go sequester themself in a corner or put on three more jackets or—any of that.

“...home, then,” the doctor said, and tried to remember where they’d left the cleaning device, the m-thing, because they still had the kitchen to fix. (a promise was a promise, even if they were creative in how they fulfilled it.)

“yes, home. and i’ll show you where the scrubbers are,” clara said pointedly, as though they’d forgotten.

“mm,” the doctor said, and in several unfluid motions—they kept missing the controls, grabbing ones beside them, not using enough force when they did hit the right ones, having to _do it all over_ _again_ —set the tardis to clara’s place. then they turned on the spot, ignoring clara’s protests that they _would_ clean that kitchen, or she’d show them...something, some threat or other, they weren’t really listening, too focused on remembering the place they’d seen the device last.

the tennis courts.

...but it wasn’t there. or in the kitchen. or in the laundry room. or the wardrobe. or the butterfly room. or the console room, when they dragged themself, wound tighter than the spines of an aeckothrell, back to check.

finally, they stopped and glared at the ceiling. after a few tense-armed moments, they shoved their hands in their pockets to keep from doing anything _stupid_ and leaned sideways against the console and tried to reason with their eyebrows before they stuck that way, all sharp and furious. never be able to ask for a spare spoon again, then.

“come on, you. kitchen duty, now.” clara, in the doorway, changed out of her elizabethan dress and holding scrubbers and dish soap. “not one word.”

the doctor, who hadn't said or done anything to warrant that comment or that tone of voice, glared harder, but took the supplies from her and stalked to the kitchen, where they placed the lot on first bit of free counter they saw and stopped.

and stared around at the mess, suddenly much larger than it'd seemed when they'd first done the cooking. (why had they done it in the first place again? something about an entrance…?)

(...no, they'd been bored. bored of the long wait, all the hours and hours of nothing to do.)

(they could do with some of those hours now. _if only_ , they thought wryly, in a voice that sounded altogether too much like clara’s, _they had a time machine_.)

they pushed the thought aside—not _funny_ , and not how time travel worked besides, and clara _knew_ that every bit as well as they did—then set about gathering all the dishes into the sink. bit rougher than they should’ve done, bit more careless. they dropped a dish, broke it into goop-covered pieces on the floor.

stared at it blankly as the little clara-voice made another stupid quip about _time machines_.

“oh for—doctor!” clara rushed forward, footsteps all a-clatter, face doing another thing (probably an angry one, she sounded angry). “i know you don’t like cleaning up your own messes,” she said in a voice half-angry and half over-patient, “but is this _really_ the way to—ugh.”

she stopped short of a bit of goop and frowned at them. “well don’t just _stand_ there. pick it up!”

they didn’t move. started to snap something about not taking orders, not being one of her _students_ , and pitying those who were, but didn’t get so far as opening their mouth. it stayed shut, even as their thoughts turned ever-more waspish ( _no wonder ms. woods wanted off-planet so badly, if_ this _is how ms. oswald treats her students—_ ). even as they tried to open it again, spit the words out.

no luck.

but just as well—they’d said it before and they’d meant it. they weren’t in the mood for shouting today.

weren’t in the mood for any of it today.

they’d done their bit, waited round, gone to the play, and it had been worth it, it really had—but all the same, all they wanted now was to clean this stupid human kitchen and get out of this stupid human home and into their tardis and—they didn’t know. something. something other than _this_.

but first, inevitably, incontrivertibly, this.

so they ignored clara, bent down, fished their screwdriver out of their pocket, fumbled a long (or was it short?) moment with the settings, and then sonicked the shards back into a plate, which they then picked up with a mild grimace and set in the sink.

“ _thank_ you,” clara said. “now was that so—?” she broke off, and their back was turned so they couldn’t see but they could almost _feel_ the funny look on her face.

pretended not to notice. set to work. realized, too late, they’d not looked for gloves.

whatever. it’d take too long to look. best get it over with.

“doctor?”

they ignored her.

“is something wrong?”

they ignored her harder, because _really_ now, this? this, on top of everything else? was her voice going to go _sickening_ now, to match her big sad falsely shrewd eyes?

“doctor,” she said firmly, and they ignored her as loudly as it was possible to ignore someone, all the way up until they felt a hand brush their shoulder and whirled around and nearly venusian aikido’d her in the face.

“hey!” she threw her hands in the way at the last second (not that it would have done any good if they hadn’t—just barely—stopped themself first). “what the h—what’s wrong?”

“not for hugging,” they tried to say, though those weren’t quite the right words, because she hadn’t tried to _hug_ them, after all, but they were the usual ones and the closest to the surface—but not close enough. so they shook their head instead, turned back to the sink, and closed their eyes, and concentrated very hard on scrubbing the dish and not biting their fingers.

they felt her arm reach out again and tensed, and stayed tense even when she pulled it back. tensed even more when she walked round the side of them and stared. (they wished, briefly, their hair were long again, long enough to cover the face she was busy staring at so intently, and whatever it was she thought she saw there.)

“you look terrible,” she said.

they gave her a withering look.

“and you’re not telling _me_ i look worse, so you must feel it, too.”

 _you’re making a lot of assumptions, ms. oswald_ , they wanted to say, but rolled their eyes instead.

“tired?” she guessed.

she wasn’t wrong, exactly, but the assumption earned her another eyeroll.

“and annoyed. and…” she trailed off. was quiet for several moments. “the dishes aren’t that important,” she said at last. “i can clean them later.”

“no.”

“oh, and the time lord speaks!”

“ha ha,” the doctor said flatly. “shut up.” then, “i said i’d clean them.”

“it’s really no trouble.”

“i _said_ i’d clean them.”

“fine,” clara said, sounding maybe a bit stung. then, after another long pause, “but i’m helping. no buts,” she added, before they could protest. “it’s my kitchen, and i want to be sure you do it right.”

she’d probably been going to clean them again after they left anyway, they thought spitefully, but didn’t say, because they _did_ have tact. unlike some people. “fine.”

“fine.” clara stepped up beside them, too close, brushing elbows.

they stepped away, and so did she, so the gap between them was almost comically wide, but filled with far fewer invisible writhing snakes.

“there’s gloves here,” she said after a moment, tapping the drawer in front of her. “want a pair?”

a pause. a nod.

she pulled out two pair, handed them one, kept the other for herself. “i hate sink sludge.”

 _figures_ , the doctor thought. “...me too,” they said.

the two of them cleaned the rest of the dishes in awkward, slightly frosty silence, and then the doctor wiped down the counters haphazardly before sweeping the floor like it’d insulted them and then slipping off to the tardis while clara put the dishes away.

if they were quick—

but not quick enough. their hands were still fumbling over the controls when clara stepped inside and shut the door.

“leaving so soon?”

“i—”

“listen, before you go,” clara interrupted, “i have something for you.”

oh, this should be good.

she held out a small cardboard box, its flaps folded over on each other so it stayed closed. the doctor frowned at it, took it, shook it, and opened it to find a load of tangles. and a few other odds and ends.

“...stim toys.”

“yeah.” she seemed surprised they recognized them. stupid. thousands of years in time and space (or had they told her hundreds? —even still), and she thought they’d never seen a stim toy before? what kind of idiot did she take them for?

“i got them for my students. pays to have a few on hand. but i’ve got dibs on that one.” she indicated a small blue tangle.

of course she did. they were tempted to take it just to spite her, but their last body hadn’t had the dexterity for tangles, and they weren’t so sure this one did either, just now, the way it’d been mangling the controls.

they took a fidget spinner and spun it a few times. “mm.” they put it back in the box. “not really my thing.”

clara rolled her eyes. “no, you prefer crinkling anachronistic wrappers in the theater.”

because anachronistic fidget spinners were so much better? the doctor frowned at her.

the grin slid off her face. “...sorry.”

“mm.” they gave her back the box.

“nothing you like?”

“no.”

“you haven't really looked.”

“no,” they said again, half-reassertion, half-agreement.

“...right.” clara paused. one beat. then another. “sorry,” she said again, in a funny voice.

they raised their eyebrows in question.

“you were leaving. want me to...pop off?”

 _yes_ , _no_ , and _shut up_ warred for space on their tongue. they settled for shrugging.

“right. that clears that up.” she shifted once, then stood firm. “well, if you're not kicking me out, i think i’ll stick round. maybe do some grading.”

they shrugged again.

“i'll just be right back.”

the doctor shrugged again, waited for her to leave, then made themself scarce.

wandered the halls til the halls led them to the zero room. they made a disgusted sound and left, walking more pointedly to the one with all the plants. wrestling with the odd thorny one they’d been gifted by the many-flippered emperor all those years ago sounded appealing….

but, though they were positive they’d taken the usual route, they wound up in front of the library instead. they considered leaving and walking until the tardis stopped moving rooms around, but they had the feeling she’d just keep moving them and moving them until they gave in anyway and the very idea of that made them want to fistfight a dalek, so they abandoned the idea and walked inside.

and there was the couch, right where they’d left it. or rather, _a_ couch. it couldn’t be the same one. it was squashier and seemed to be covered in a material they didn’t recognize.

they ignored it. paced among the shelves instead, up and down and in and out, winding further into the space than they had earlier, tracing their fingers over books and vials and globes and stacks and stacks of data chips and old scrolls and more books.

in one section, they walked past the same bookshelf twenty-two times, back and forth, back and forth, wringing their hands after a fashion. in another, they walked in circles round a column, hands shoved deep in their pockets. in another they walked aimlessly til they wrapped back around, tapping out beethoven on their right leg.

they headed back toward the entry way to start another winding, doubled-back loop—

and there was clara, marking a stack of papers as she walked. she glanced up. “oh,” she said. “hey.”

they nodded at her. glanced at her papers. tossed her their sonic.

it landed, by a miracle, on top of the papers, and she blinked at it in surprise. “oh. thanks.” some quick maneuvering, a few clicks, a loud buzz as she changed the font to something a little more dyslexia-friendly, and then she tossed the sonic back. they didn’t catch it. had to bend down and pick it up.

“anyway,” clara said, and wandered off to sit against a nearby—but thankfully not _too_ nearby—shelf.

the doctor went back to pacing, on autopilot, until it got too dull, too gray, and then they grabbed a book at random and came back to the couch, which now had blankets on it. they rolled their eyes at them, but sat down.

pulled their knees up to their chest and tried to read. put the book down, after an interminable sludge of time, and pressed their hands to their eyes. pressed harder, until they saw sparks, and then stopped. the sparks hurt.

they dropped their hands down, glanced over at clara, who was still there, scribbling away at the papers, then looked away again. tapped their fingers on their knees. picked at a loose thread in their trousers, twisting it this way, then that, then this way again….

they glanced over at the pile of blankets. stared at it for a long moment, unmoving. then, abruptly, they took the lot  and set about laying each one flat on top of themself in turn, until they were absolutely buried in them, a thin streak of time lord crushed under a mound of fabric, half-rounded like an island poking out of the sea, weighty as a slab of marble.

or, not quite. (they should know. they’d been buried under actual slabs of marble before. this didn’t _quite_ compare.)

still. it was heavy, was the point. heavy and warm and—damn the tardis—near enough perfect. (she’d be smugger than a cat in a box under a sunlamp with overpriced fish, when this was over, and very nearly was already.)

(but enough of that now. that wasn’t important now. important was—)

they closed their eyes. breathed. let themself go boneless.

when they could hazard a guess at how much time they’d spent buried—twenty-two minutes and fifteen seconds, give or take a few nanoseconds—they rolled over and stayed a little while longer (three more minutes, precisely), and then resurfaced.

picked up their book again. read some. resurfaced from that. glanced over at clara, who was wholly absorbed in a small battered paperback, the essays abandoned at her side, and left to go wander some more, slower this time, less pointed, more aimless.

when they got back, clara was gone, so they went looking for her.

found her, after some trial and error, in the kitchen, making coffee.

or, no. not coffee. cocoa.

they frowned. why cocoa? clara _lived_ on coffee. or least, she had last they’d checked. had it changed? they didn’t think it’d changed. but then maybe it had, you couldn’t always tell with claras. or at least, this clara (who was, at present, as with all the friends they took aboard, the only one of her name who particularly counted).

“hey,” clara said cheerfully. “cocoa? my mum’s secret recipe.”

the doctor blinked. reached for the proffered mug automatically, then drew back, brows furrowing. “this isn’t a trap, is it?”

clara gave them a funny look. “no? why would it be a trap?”

the doctor thought of quiet moments and courtyards and spit-takes, and said, “no reason.” and took the mug.

“...okay, whatever that story is, you’re telling me it.”

“i’m really not.”

“you really are,” clara said. “but later. drink.”

the doctor drank. it was, they reflected, really very good cocoa. clara had a talent. (or her mum had, rather.) it took effort not to drain the mug in seconds. they were very, very tempted—but if they did there wouldn’t be any left, and there was no guarantee clara’d feel like making any more. so they sat at the counter, nursed the mug slow.

clara sat across from them with a mug of her own. “good?”

they nodded.

“good.”

the doctor traced their fingers around the rim of the cup after they finished, waiting for clara to be done, too, so they could. they didn’t know. something.

“...thanks,” they said belatedly.

“course. you never did get to drink the ones you made earlier, so i just thought….”

“thanks,” they said again.

clara nodded. a little later, she set her own mug down, empty. “...so.”

the doctor tensed, a dozen sudden timeship emergencies on the tip of their tongue.

“i never did say thanks.”

they blinked at her.

“for taking me to see lear, i mean.”

“...oh. yeah, course.”

she shook her head. “no, i mean it. i know it wasn’t the easiest trip.”

“don’t be stupid, i can get to elizabethan england in a _second_.”

“you know that’s not what i meant.”

the doctor shrugged uncomfortably. it hadn’t been a _hard_ trip, either. (trips weren’t hard unless something Happened, and nothing had.)

but that wasn’t really the point. the point was she hadn’t, strictly speaking, been meant to notice or even think of things like trips having difficulty levels. it wasn’t meant to be _obvious_ . there wasn’t meant to be _worrying_.

“anyway, thanks.” she paused. “though next time, if it’s that kind of day, you could always just wait. rest up, or whatever.”

 _or nagging_. “thanks, mum,” the doctor said, as bitingly as they could.

“shut up. i’m making a point here. and i’m not done.” she paused. “still wanted to say i’m. sorry. about the wrapper.”

or _guilt_ , who had time for guilt? “shut up,” the doctor said. “i’m fine. grown old time lord, i can handle a bit of human snapping.”

“snapping?”

“well, you were a bit snappy.”

“i was not.”

“you were too.”

“was n—” clara shook her head. “you know what. never mind. i’m sorry, is the point. crinkle away next time, i’m sure i’ll manage.”

“right.”

“right.”

the doctor turned their mug round in their hands. “...any chance you could make more?”

clara rolled her eyes, but nodded. “yeah, all right, give it here.”

they grinned as they handed it over, and she took it and her own and made more.

“thanks,” they said, and then swore as they burned their tongue on the first sip.

“careful,” clara said dryly. “it’s hot.”

“oh, shut up.”

she laughed, and then after a moment they laughed, and then clara started enthusing over the play, and then the conversation turned to other things, and others, for the next long while.

-

a few trips later, the doctor tossed clara a small device that’d change the font on anything, printed or not, at the push of one very simple button, no sonic-borrowing or setting-shifting required. then, more quietly, slipped a very fiddly bracelet in with her things.

(when they saw her wearing it—and using it—a few trips later, they said nothing, but marked it a win.)

-

not the next time clara boarded the tardis, but the time after, she tossed something small and cube-shaped at their head, which they predictably failed to catch; it bounced off their skull.

when they picked it up, they turned it over in their hands, eyebrows lifting a little in recognition.

a fidget cube.

they explored each side in rapid succession, and ended on the side with the little switch. pressed it back-forth, back-forth, back-forth. internally declared it the favorite, stuck it in their pocket, moved on without a word.

places to go, people to see, planets to talk about. no time for expounding on the virtues of a little bit of human plastic.

-

the next time the tardis deposited them in clara’s place four hours early, they did a preliminary scan, checked the surrounding street, and then went to the library and hung round in silence—except for the click-click-clicking of the little bit of plastic.

when she finally got home from work, they leapt up and into the fray with the plastic a small, easy addition to the usual weight in their pocket.

(and if clara heard its little switch clicking, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, as they explored the seemingly-abandoned ship, she didn’t say a word.)

when all was said and done, they came back to the ship, clara graded papers while they wandered, and then she made cocoa.

-

it became a thing. sometimes clara graded, sometimes they wandered, sometimes there were blankets, sometimes there were conversations, and sometimes there were none of those things—but always, always, there was cocoa.

-

(until, of course, there wasn’t.)

(yet still, some days, long days, gray days, still—)

(some days they came back to the tardis, and they wandered, and they missed the weight of something in their pocket.) (they’d tossed the cube somewhere in the tardis, along with a number of other odds and ends, the last time they’d bothered to clean out their pockets.)

(some days they came back to the tardis, and they buried themself in blankets, and they listened to the squeak of the couch—uncovered by the missing scratch of a pen—beneath them as they breathed.) (sometimes, they played music to cover it up.)

(some days they came back to the tardis, and meant to make something teeth-chillingly cold and found themself with a cup of cocoa instead.) (it never tasted quite right.)

-

(there were other days, though. other friends, other habits, other drinks, other things to tuck in pockets and smooth out the edges of sharp gray hours. others, in the days to come, just as there had been others, so many others, in the days-years-centuries before. and, those other days, other habits spilled forward: cooking enough to feed four adults, or one very hungry little boy; reading the nearest novel aloud; humming old familiar tunes; climbing up to unlikely places; eating takeaway on an old park bench; playing a slightly careworn guitar; painting; coding; walking nowhere; stringing beads; talking at length to the nearest person; listening to someone else talk at length; "borrowing" coats; sleeping under massive piles of blankets; knitting; and so, so many others.)

-

but in between all that, all those habits, the before and the after and the others, there was this: a quiet library, a strip of counter, two mugs of cocoa, and two laughing time travelers.


End file.
